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This weekend I had the great pleasure of participating in my first webinar: The 3rd Virtual Round Table Online Conference. It was an amazing experience, I had the pleasure of "running" into many friends from my PLN and loved the sessions I was able to attend. During the Unconference we all decided on some topics of interest and then each went to a virtual conference room to discuss the theme we had chosen. In the room I went to we talked about error correction - ways we do it, when we do it, etc. We shared ideas, our experiences. There were some great ideas, and I chipped in with an activity I really enjoy doing and the students have the greatest time with it. But most importantly, I believe it to be one of the most effective ways of error correction, because the correction is made by the students; they correct sentences they've written. (By the way, for those of you who were in the room, I am sorry if I stumbled or did something wrong - I was extremely nervous about speaking there!)

What a cool way to have fun with language, use the projector and have kids work in teams collaboratively. :)

The parents and students were engaged because the students really knew how to maneuver the iPad to demonstrate all of the work that they completed. I could sense that students were taking pride in showing their online professional portfolio, creations, and tweets. I am also thrilled that the professional blogs are a year-to-date body of work. We didn't just show them tests as was in the past, but all the learning experiences that have occurred along the journey. Students had an agenda that they were to follow and parents totally wanted to hear all about it. Some parents and students were present for over a half hour!

Natalie, may be some good stuff in here.

"Economics in the Elementary Classroom posted Sep 3, 2010 6:31 PM by lezlie harris [ updated Sep 3, 2010 6:50 PM ] I am so convinced that little children learn more by pretending and playing. I recently found a role-playing economics unit on the Scholastic site. During this unit, the teacher creates a community in the classroom where children apply for jobs, keep time sheets for those jobs, tally their wages, receive a pay check, cash it at the bank, and shop in the class store. Wow, how powerful is that! Think of all the concepts that can be taught within this unit! I can teach data, charts, graphs, money, persuasive writing, and many social studies standards. Since I am always trying to convert classroom activities into elearning activities, here is a Google Template for submitting job applications. My 2nd graders have loved submitting these applications. Their responses are so sweet! I may copy them to include in my parent conferences."

Very cool templates

"Going beyond Google and wikipedia - John Royce, Christina Nord Is the source credible?"

I had two eye-opening experiences this week, both really got me thinking about online sharing, curation of digital versus "real" work (E-portfolios) , and overall student learning, both in terms of motivation for and expressions of. The first was the grade 10 MYP Personal Project exhibition, the second my daughter, Kaia's, student-led conference for her PYP Kindergarten class.

In the past, my students have used Photostory3 to show and talk about their learning as a starting point for their Student Led Conference with their parents. I'm now teaching in a mac school so Photostory3 was not an option. I felt that iMovie was just a little too intricate for what I wanted, a wiki was a consideration and then the brainwave of VoiceThread appeared in my head late one night!

In the past, my students have used Photostory3 to show and talk about their learning as a starting point for their Student Led Conference with their parents. I'm now teaching in a mac school so Photostory3 was not an option. After considering iMovie (and all of it's amazing features) I felt that it had too many features that might be distracting for what I wanted. The ease at which a mac allows you to record your voice, and video using the inbuilt webcam and mic was still going to be the foundation of recording our learning but I still needed to find a suitable platform. A wiki was a consideration and then the brainwave of VoiceThread appeared in my head late one night! The more I considered VoiceThread, the more it's interactive features appealed to me. Using Photostory3 meant a final product. Nothing more added, no room for comment by parents and unless you sent the exported movie file, or embedded it on a wiki, no way for other family members in different parts of the country or in other parts of world, to see it. Using VoiceThread was easy! We've already used it several times this year, so the "tool" and how to use it was already established. Here's the step by step organisation we used to complete a digital protfolio for each student in Room202.

Education blogs, like having a conference where you can borrow the best ideas of the people round you 24/7